Stars
by Kal L. Fitzwell
Summary: Placed 2000 years after the original story, and roughly 500 years after humanity left behind a desolated Earth to find a new home, Stars follows the events of Les Misérables from the viewpoint of Inspector Javert—reimagined as fleet resident Jav Eyre. TW: All the warnings. This story deals with mature themes including, but not limited to, sexual violence and racism.
1. Chapter 1

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth ... so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; ... in other words, ... so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.

— Victor Hugo - _Les Misérables_ (Prologue)

* * *

**Chapter 1  
The _Lativerna_  
Year: 3792**

"This is all your fault!" Gran declares, stomping her bare foot on the grated floor.

"Shh!" Jav puts a hand to his sister's mouth and peaks around her shoulder.

_Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!_

They can hear the echoing thuds of nearing guard boots. Jav lowers his hand. "Come here." Three years older than she, he's easily able to lift Gran onto a pipe built into the corridor wall. He points to pipes that criss-cross the ceiling. "Climb!" Jav commands; and Gran does.

He scales the wall after her and swings himself effortlessly atop the pipes. Like a spider, Gran crawls up to him.

_Thunk! Thunk! _The guard rounds the corner at the end of the corridor.

_Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!_ His steps draw closer.

_Thunk! Thunk! _He is right beneath them. Gran wiggles into Jav's side, but remains dutifully quiet. Jav wishes, pushes mentally, wills the guard not to look up. He hopes their dusty gray prison uniforms will make sufficient camouflage if the prayers don't work.

_Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!_ The guard moves on, his steps growing faint. Soon, he rounds a corner and disappears.

"This is still all your fault!" Gran whispers to Jav in a way that makes it clear she would prefer to be yelling.

"Well, griping won't change it." There's not much space, but with several practiced wiggles, Jav flips onto his back. His nose nearly touches the ceiling. "Try to get some sleep."

Gran sighs and flips over too, having an easier time of it than her brother. She doesn't say anything, just lays, silent. Jav lays silent too, save the grinding of his teeth.

It is a particular skill, laying silent like this, shared among victims and those in hiding. It's not a stretch to say that all of the children aboard the _Lativerna_, The Fleet's minimum-security prison ship, share this uniquely useful skill.

The tooth-grinding, however, comes directly from the fact that Gran is right—it is all Jav's fault they've been locked out of their quarters. However minimal the security, the _Lativerna_ is still a prison ship, after all, and that includes a curfew with doors locked behind.

While none of the children aboard the _Lativerna—_often not-so-affectionately referred to as _The Lat'_ due to the similarity with the word _latrine—_can technically be said to be inmates, New Earth law views them as the property of their inmate parents and, as such, they are expected to follow such simple rules as Don't Leave the Detention Area and Obey the Nightly Curfew.

The guards wouldn't punish them if caught outside of curfew—just deliver them home—but their father certainly would. So the two lay silent, cold pipes against their backs, and watch the ceiling.

"Jav?" Gran's voice crawls to him through the dark and pulls him from the edge of sleep.

"Yeah?" Barely a sound.

"Will you enter the program?"

Jav is silent—and thankful for the darkness as his face reddens; it's exactly the topic he'd been contemplating when sleep overtook him. Finally, "No."

"You don't have to stay for me. I can watch out for myself." She scoots closer, but her body pins Jav's arm and he scoots away to free it.

Jav chuckles softly. "Like tonight?"

Gran glares at Jav's profile. "That was your fault."

"It was Kalil," Jav protests, knowing it's an excuse.

"Don't blame Kalil." Her glare softens. She pauses, thinking. Thinking, perhaps, that her brother may be more of a person than she'd previously allowed for. Finally, "Is Kalil why you're staying?"

Jav jerks involuntarily and kicks a piece of vertical piping. It comes loose and spews steam to the tune of a piercing scream.

"Quick!" Jav cries as he crawls beside Gran to the edge of the piping. He hangs by his hands and drops to the floor. Gran follows.

_Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!_ Boots approach from the aft-end of the corridor. Jav takes Gran's hand. Barefoot, they run down the grated corridor, turning blindly at a T junction...and right into the crisp blue uniform of Guard Captain Gagnon.

The large man turns, the movement more momentous and laborious for his enormous physique. He smiles. Cruelly.

* * *

Jav knew it had been the guard captain's intent to worsen the beating, not get him off the hook, when he had kindly explained to their father that the two were late because they had been asking about the Correctional Officer Training Academy program—COTA for short. A program that provides the only guaranteed ticket out of inmate life for children born to prisoners through training as correctional officers.

It's a topic that's been on Jav's mind a lot lately as one may apply when they are twelve years old and his twelfth birthday has just passed.

His bunk, much like the pipes, is small enough that Jav's nose nearly touches the ceiling or, more precisely, the bottom of Gran's bunk. He swings out and stands up. Gran lays in her bed and stares blankly upward. Blood, frozen in a coagulated dribble, betrays the cut on her eyebrow.

"I'm gonna see what Kalil's up to," he says.

She doesn't respond, just continues to stare.

"Maybe he'll have another crazy disguise to try and fool the guards..." He pokes her shoulder playfully.

She turns her head away from him.

"Okay," Jav says.

He opens the small hatch to the communal space of their family's quarters. Beads, crystals, spheres, and bones fill the shelves that dot the metal walls. Jav's mother, her hair braided and beaded in its typical style, lights a stick of incense. She blows out the flame and, behind it, sees Jav leaving his room.

"Come here," she gestures to him, and he has no choice but to follow and sit across from her. She places the incense between them. Jav watches the smoke curl up to the discolored ceiling. "Hold out your hands," she says.

Jav does as his mother says, holding out his hands, palms up. He's familiar with her fortune-telling routine. "You know I don't buy—"

"Psh!" She silences him. Placing her hands atop his, palm against palm, she leans her head back. When her neck can take no more, her eyes follow, rolling into her head until only the yellowed scleras peer from her emaciated face.

A moan escapes her throat, pushes past her lips; it carries a note. Another moan, another note. Faster and faster they come, tuneless, random; she shakes with the effort.

She falls forward. Jav catches her before she knocks the incense over. He looks at her and raises an eyebrow. "Future tell ya anything?"

She pushes herself away from him. Her nod is exaggerated and the beads in her hair clack loudly. She points between his eyes. "You will pursue a life of a crime, and it will end you!"

Jav swats her hand down. His expression remains incredulous. "Looks like Gagnon was right then—I _should_ join COTA."

She hits him across the face with an open hand. The fact that Jav's mother, like all careful inmates, wears her rings with stones palm-side to hide their value from the casual passerby, makes the slap significantly more vicious than it may otherwise seem to a reader unfamiliar with prison ship custom.

Face bleeding, Jav storms from the family's quarters, putting in his best effort to slam the hatch behind. He huffs as he marches purposefully down the corridor to a destination he hasn't yet determined.

* * *

"Damn Jav," Kalil yells down the corridor as he approaches, "that's one hell of an eye you got."

Jav rubs the swollen socket and winces. "Fucking Gagnon."

Kalil lives one level up and two blocks over from Jav, not that blocks over and up are much help in navigating a multi-level ship where all the hallways look the same, save the debris of life scattered outside each hatch. He's thirteen and, as such, has missed his chance to apply for COTA and won't leave the _Lativerna_ until he reaches eighteen, if ever.

"What's that?" Kalil snatches a paper from Jav's hand.

He'd been holding it carefully, trying not to cause wrinkles. The swift movement slices into the webbing between Jav's thumb and forefinger. "Ow!" He punches Kalil.

Kalil falls, but he's laughing. He reads the paper while laying on the floor.

"You're not really gonna do this, are you?" Kalil sits up as he talks. "I mean, you just got the application 'cause you're twelve and that's what you do... But you're not actually gonna _go_, are you? Be one of them blue turds?"

As _Lativerna_, goddess of thieves, was nicknamed to be synonymous with a latrine, so those children coming from her—that is, those such as Jav, Gran, and Kalil—are often given clever nicknames that all boil down to _excrement_. The general view of such children, and the adults they become, mirrors this language in near identical fashion.

"Better a blue turd than a gray one," Jav says, snatching the application back. It's now hopelessly wrinkled so he folds it and puts it in his pocket. He sucks the cut on his hand.

Kalil thinks on what Jav has said as he stands, mulling it over as if it had come from Confucius or Ghandi. After a moment, he shakes his head. "My conclusion is that you are a dumbass."

"Am not! Just 'cause being stuck here is good enough for you doesn't make it good enough for me. And disagreeing doesn't make me a dumbass!" Jav huffs in the aftermath of his outburst.

"Well only a dumbass would consider turning his back on his friends and family in exchange for a _government_"—he spits out the word as one might rotten food—"paycheck!" Kalil pauses for breath. "A dumbass, or a traitor. You a traitor?"

Jav shakes his head. Kalil, still unhappy, shoves his friend aside and turns into his family's quarters. It's difficult to slam a full-size hatch, and a malnourished thirteen-year-old has no chance, but Kalil gives it a valiant shot at any rate. After a moment, Jav pulls the wrinkled and folded application from his pocket and drops it on the ground, a memento of his decision for when Kalil does open the door again, and walks away.

* * *

Jav jogs, huffing, up to his family's quarters. The trip from the warden's office took longer than he'd anticipated and he very nearly missed curfew for the second night in a row.

The warning bell for curfew sounds. Three minutes. Still breathing heavy, Jav watches the speaker until the bell sound ends. Steeling himself, he opens the hatch and walks inside.

Gran sits opposite their mother, the incense extinguished now, and eats from a bowl with her hand. Jav's mother nods to him and points to another bowl of food resting on the table. He sits in front of it, on a pillow, and scoops the gruel paste with his fingers and into his mouth.

"This is disgusting," he says, dropping the bowl. He wipes the leftover gruel paste on his uniform.

The main hatch bursts open and Jav's father, a man surpassed in size only by Guard Captain Gagnon, thunders into the tiny room. Gran scrambles to the corner and pulls her knees to her chest. Their father rounds on Jav.

"Is this what I have for a son?" he thunders, waving a crumpled piece of paper—the application Jav left in front of Kalil's quarters.

Jav scoots back, his head tilted up at an awkward angle.

The big man steps around the table. "You tryin' to get away from me, boy?" He pauses, ends a step short. A smile comes over his face and Jav whimpers. It's not a friendly smile.

Jav's father steps around the boy, so small compared to the grown man, and grabs the trembling little girl in the corner by her arm. Gran squeals in pain and surprise. He shakes her like a puppet to make his point.

"Who'll watch out for her if you leave?" he screams. Gran's cries punctuate his words. "You wanna know what happens if you leave her?" He shakes Gran more violently and pulls her toward the main hatch. "I'll show you what happens!"

Jav scrambles up, follows his father and sister out the door. Gran's cries are softer now; she's regained control. Jav sees a guard patrolling ahead. He runs up and shouts, "Please, help, I think—"

The nightstick attacks, seemingly from nowhere, and the blue blur of the guard fades as Jav falls to the floor. "Obey your father, boy," the guard spits at him.

Gran cries and, fast as he can, but much too slowly, Jav stands erect and finds his balance. He follows Gran's whimpers around a corner and sees his father dragging her down a ladder to the lower decks. Jav reaches for his sister but she shakes her head.

"He's holding my ankle," she whispers before climbing further down.

Jav crouches, looking at the empty hole where his little sister disappeared. A voice drifts up. Joking. Hostile. "You'll miss the good part!"

Jav climbs down the ladder and follows his father to the entry hatch of a storage unit. The big man knocks and the hatch is opened by a toothless inmate with so many age spots on his bald head he'd have no need for a toupee—if he cared about such things, which he does not.

Jav's father lifts Gran by the arm until her feet dangle helplessly in the air. She whimpers, but doesn't cry out. "I have a treat for tonight's party," he says. And then, tossing his head to indicate Jav, he adds, "And a new initiate."

The old man grins wide enough to reveal the black spots on his single remaining tooth. He grabs Gran's free arm—she cries out involuntarily at in pincer-like grip—and leads Gran away.

The large room, perhaps more correctly described as a small warehouse in the belly of a converted prison ship, is ringed with makeshift wooden balconies. Jav stares as his father leads him upwards, wondering how the inmates gained access to so many nails.

The answer is obvious as soon as Jav's father takes him to the edge of the balcony and he sees the main stage in its entirety: A boxing ring, surrounded by prowling inmates and guards, inside a cage made of wire fencing. He sits next to his father, legs dangling off the unrailed edge of the ramshackle platform, and watches the guards circle among the inmates. The nightsticks in their belts instead of their hands and the smiles on their faces show they're here for entertainment, not enforcement.

The toothless old man, still dragging Gran, shoves his way through the milling crowd around the boxing ring. Jav feels a million miles away, yet somehow close enough to see the terror in his sister's eyes. She refuses to climb into the boxing ring so a guard picks her up and tosses her roughly in.

"Careful!" the old man scolds. He, too, climbs into the ring and drags Gran, now crying harder than ever, to the center. "Stay here," he says to her. And then he walks away, through the crowd, out the gate to the pen. He shuts the gate; locks it.

"Gentlemen!" he calls to the caged crowd. "And not-so-gentle men! This is a special one-time treat donated to us by Jarlath Eyre and his son Jav. Eat up!" He puts a whistle to his mouth and blows.

Gran's frightened form, smaller and smaller as the men approach, shakes violently in the center of the boxing ring. The first man—a guard, and not even a blue turd—rips the worn prison uniform from her frail body. Jav covers his face, unable to look.

"You will watch," his father growls and rips the hand nearest him away from Jav's face. "You will see what happens when you abandon your sister."

Fear and pain overcome Gran's resilience and she cries out, sharp and terrible. Jav instinctively covers his ears, but quickly lowers his hands when his father looks over.

Obediently, Jav watches and listens until the old man blows the whistle and opens the gate. As the men, no, monsters leave the cage, he pushes his way inside and climbs onto the boxing ring.

No longer in the center, the broken, naked form of Gran Eyre lolls against a corner post. Jav runs to her, through the puddles of blood, and wraps her in his arms. Her head rolls away from him, eyes half open but unseeing. He feels her chest. No breath. No heartbeat. Dead.

"No!" He screams the word and it echoes, magnifies, dies. The men, the inmates and guards, pause momentarily to listen. The cry of anguish is answered by echoes of laughter.

Jav lowers his forehead to Gran's still chest. "I'll do it," he whispers to his sister between sobs. "You're right. You don't need me. You can watch out for yourself."

* * *

"You went to the party?" Kalil asked.

He had appeared at Jav's family's quarters that morning, full of the forgiveness typical to young boys and their good friends. The two spent the morning arranging a heist of the guards' laundry in order to pad Kalil's wardrobe of disguises. They're currently walking the corridors, timing the guards' patrols.

Jav only nods in answer to Kalil's question.

"Damn, my dad's only taken me once," he says, "and he made me wait 'til I was thirteen so there'd be no chance of me goin' blue turd first."

Jav walks silently, thinking. "What would you think if I did?" he asks after a moment.

"If you what? Went blue turd?" Kalil scoffs. "You already know what I think. But..." He trails off.

"But what?"

"I dunno." Kalil stops walking and lowers his voice. Jav moves closer to hear. "I mean, the party's firm and all, sealed, but... I just can't help thinkin' about Gran. Kinda makes me wanna go blue turd too, ya know?"

"Well, doesn't matter, 'cause my old man'll never let me go." Jav moves away, continuing their walking conversation.

"How's he s'posed to stop you?" Kalil asks. "He can't keep 'em from accepting you."

"No, they already did that." Jav lets out a mirthless laugh. "He found out that if I miss my flight I get no chance to reapply."

"When's your flight?"

"This afternoon." Jav sighs. "Never. No way I'm getting past him."

Kalil is silent for a moment and then shoots his pointed finger into the air. "Ah-ha! I have a solution!"

"What's that?" Jav isn't hopeful, or at least, he doesn't want to be hopeful.

"A disguise!" Kalil declares with an air of triumph. Surely he heard a majestic and celebratory fanfare accompanying the pronouncement.

Jav scoffs, sighs, hangs his head. "You're useless."

"No, I'm serious," Kalil insists. "If we can pull off this plan to get our hands on some guard uniforms, I bet you could just walk right past your dad and onto the shuttle no problem!"

"A guard's a guard..."

"Right. I doubt he'll give you a second glance."

Jav hears footsteps, looks around, sees a guard in regulation blue uniform. "If he's here," Jav says, "then the laundry is unguarded. Run now I bet we could snatch a couple."

Guard behind them, the two boys walk away, conspicuously nonchalant. Once around the corner, they burst into a laughing run.

As predicted, the guards' laundry is unwatched when the boys arrive laughing and panting. Just one detail they'd forgotten to account for: The workers _inside_.

Kalil watches the hall, listening for the footsteps of the returning guard.

Jav peers through the puffs of steam that fill the room. Inmates scrub blue uniforms in giant tubs of hot water. Others, farther back, fold the clean and dry clothes. Jav crouches low, below the level of the large washing tubs. Wet and soapy uniforms will do them no good. He eyes the folding tables at the back of the room, but the distance to them is impossible without being discovered.

An inmate wheels a large laundry trolley, stacked high with dirty uniforms, to a worker at a nearby washing tub. Moving between the tubs and the wall, Jav crawls through the tight space until he reaches the gap by the tub he wants. Just in front of it, at the end, stands the cart piled high with ubiquitous blue uniforms.

Moving slowly, quietly, in that mousy way known to victims and the hunted, he reaches the corner of the square washing tub. The inmate is busy scrubbing, his eyes fixed on the work in front of him.

Jav reaches out, tentatively, slowly, and pulls a shirt from the cart. The inmate doesn't notice. Faster, more sure, Jav reaches for another shirt. Then a pair of pants.

"What are you doin' there?" a voice asks behind him.

Jav turns, realizing he'd put his back to the working inmate.

"Tryin' ta getcha some blues?"

Jav backs away, hugging the clothes to his chest like a prized possession. The inmate advances.

"Well you better be puttin' those back 'cause if any o' them go missin', well, who you think they gonna blame?" The inmate shakes his head. "Not some weaselly little piece of _Lat_' sludge, that's for sure."

The inmate snatches at Jav, but not fast enough. The boy burrows behind the washing tubs. The inmate reaches in, too large to follow, fingers stretching to grab anything they can. Jav scurries to the door and, with only a whoop to grab Kalil's attention, runs off with his prizes: Two guard shirts and one pair of guard pants.

* * *

"You should've grabbed a belt," Kalil grumbles as he rolls the waistband of the pants inward. Prison uniforms, being jumpsuits, don't require belts, which are considered a suicide risk among the inmate population.

Jav stares nervously down at himself. It's obvious he's only a child playing dress-up in an adult's clothes. It didn't help that he'd apparently taken Guard Captain Gagnon's uniform, a near-tent of fabric custom altered to fit the giant's bulging frame.

Kalil gives up on his task. "Fuck it. You're gonna hafta just hold 'em up by one hand."

Jav sighs. "Like a real guard."

"Damn right like a real guard." Kalil winks.

Jav peeks out from the alcove where he hastily buttons the gigantic blue shirt over his prison coveralls. He watches his father pace a few feet in front of the gated entrance to the shuttle bay. The first gate, made of wire fencing identical to that used to construct the party's cage, stands open. Armed guards to either side discourage unauthorized exits from the detention area. A second, locked gate, made of sturdy steel bars, stands beyond the first.

"Maybe if I time it with his pacing, he won't even see me until it's too late," Jav says.

"You'll only have one shot though," Kalil points out.

"I only have one shot anyway," Jav says.

He watches his father. Forward. Away. Forward. Away. The large man seems to grow angrier, visibly redder, with each pass. Forward. Away. Forward. Away.

Forward. Approach. Turn.

Jav dashes to the gate as soon as his father's back has turned. His feet, colored with coal dust meant to simulate shoes, slip when he leaves the grated flooring of the corridor. His father sees him and lunges. Jav slips sideways, using the coal dust to his advantage.

"Yes! Go Jav!" Kalil cheers from the corridor.

"Let me through!" Jav screams to the guards as he dodges another lunge from his father. "I'm an applicant! Let me through!"

He runs through the first gate, followed closely by a father nearly foaming at the mouth.

"Back sir." The voice is calm, yet forceful, and moments afterward, Jav's father is yanked to a halt that takes him from his feet.

Jav reaches the steel gate and beats on the bars. "Let me though! I'm an applicant!" He points to a small vessel bearing the shield icon of the Madaean—the ship that houses COTA. "That's my shuttle!"

Jav's father grunts and rages as the guards, two to an arm, drag him back into the detention area. Slowly, the steel gate swings open. Feeling the cold floor beneath his feet for the first time, Jav steps into the shuttle bay.

_Clang!_ The gate swings shut behind.


	2. Chapter 2

_Jav Eyre, the son of two inmates aboard the minimum-security prison ship _Lativerna_, wasn't certain if he'd apply for the Correctional Officers Training Academy until his father, incensed that his son would even think of leaving the family, punished Jav by forcing him to watch the brutal rape and murder of his nine-year-old sister, Gran. With no reason to stay, Jav defied his father and met the shuttle destined to take him away from a prisoner's life forever._

* * *

**Chapter 2  
The _Mandaean_  
Year: 3792**

Feet slipping from caked coal dust, Jav scrambles across the smooth floor toward the waiting shuttle. Even with the metal gate closed fast behind, he can feel the lurking form of his father waiting to snatch him back into the bowels of the _Lat'_.

The warden, a once-muscular man now gone soft, waits beside the open shuttle door, his glower growing hotter as Jav approaches. "Think you've already earned a uniform, boy?" the warden growls.

"No, sir." Jav stops, scrambles from the tent-like garments. "Sorry, sir." He hands the shirt and pants over and places a foot onto the shuttle step, ready to leave the prison ship forever behind.

A meaty hand lands on his shoulder, stopping him. Jav freezes. Was there a mistake? Is he being sent back?

"Think careful, son," the warden says. "You're nothing but _Lat'_ shit to anyone you meet from now on. Sure you're ready for that?"

Jav turns, fixes the warden's eyes with a steely gaze. "I've been nothin' but _Lat'_ shit to everyone I've met so far."

The warden nods, removes his hand. Jav climbs into the small shuttle and sits in one of the two empty seats. The pilot and navigator sit in the other two seats.

"Ready little turd?" the navigator asks with a grin.

"Ready," Jav confirms.

* * *

"Guard Trainee Eyre, reporting," Jav says upon entering Commander Fay's office, body at stiff attention.

"Trainee Eyre..." Fay flips through images on his desktop, one replaced with another at the swipe of a finger. "You're from _Lativerna_, yes?"

"That's right, sir."

"Please, sit." Fay gestures to the chair in front of his desk. The barracks commander sits in his own chair on the opposing side of the desk.

Jav sits in the chair. His toes barely scrape against the ground, but he resists the urge to swing his legs.

"You know who I am," Fay continues.

Jav nods. The commander of trainee barracks 23, Fay is responsible for Jav's entire class.

"I'm often assigned the difficult guard trainees," Commander Fay says as he relaxes back into his chair. "I'm sure the higher-ups took one look at your application, classified you as _Lat'_ shit, and sent you to me to be taken care of."

"I'll work hard, sir," Jav says.

"I know you will," Fay responds, "but hard work isn't always enough. You also need to be able to work as a team. The other recruits need to trust you."

"I'm sure they will—"

"They won't," Fay interrupts. "You're _Lat'_ shit and they'll never accept you, let alone trust you."

Jav stares at the barracks commander, but remains silent.

"You have four years before you move on to an upperclassmen's barracks. Until that time, you will live, eat, and breathe with your barrack-mates." Fay leans forward onto his desk, close to Jav's face. "You won't survive without their trust."

Jav's eyes are saucers. "What do I do?"

Fay swipes his finger along his desk, flipping through photos of the recruits in barracks 23, until he finds the one he wants. With a tap, the picture grows. Charcoal eyes stare at Jav from beneath an unruly head of curls. "Get her to like you."

* * *

"Move! Move! Move!" the commander shouts at the trainees. Pallets, stacked vertically and adorned with various obstacles, block the corridors of what is unaffectionately known as Shit Loop. Trainees are expected to use ropes, handholds, and their wits to make it through the course as quickly as possible.

Jav watches the other underclassmen as they throw themselves upon one another to reach the top of the first pallet-formed wall. It's the fourth day on the course and will be the fourth day he fails to get past even the first obstacle. Aboard the _Lativerna_, he'd been unaware of how scrawny he truly was for the simple reason that all the other kids he knew had also been malnourished their entire lives.

"Get your ass moving, Eyre!" Fay barks.

Slowly, Jav walks to the first obstacle but he can't penetrate the writhing mass scrabbling of bodies. He tries to climb, but another recruit shoves him violently backward. Jav falls, his head bouncing against the corridor's metal wall.

"Ow." He rubs the back of his head to soothe the pain, and looks toward the obstacle wall. He can see between the stacked pallets and the corridor wall to the next obstacle, where the backup of bodies had significantly lessened.

Curious, Jav stands and walks up to the space beside the wall. It's a tight fit, but by turning sideways he can just barely squeeze through to the next area.

"You can't do that!" Tafa Hanley yells as she drops down next to him from the top of the wall. "I had to fight to make it over!"

Jav doesn't doubt she would have fought, but he can't believe anyone would have willingly placed themselves in opposition to her. At fifteen years old, Tafa's the oldest in their barracks group and all but officially leads the rest of the class. She also has charcoal eyes and a head of unruly curls.

"How are you going to stop me?" Jav teases as he runs for the space between the corridor wall and the next obstacle. Tafa grabs for him, but he manages to slip away before her grip can close.

"Wait!" she yells as Jav shimmies through the narrow space. "Come back I want— Urgh!"

Her hand, reaching through the space where the skinny boy had so recently slipped, opens and closes in a pantomime of grabbing. Jav steps close enough to speak, but stays out of reach of her fingers.

"You should come with us on the raid!"

"Ha!" Jav turns and runs past the next obstacle.

It's the fourth day on the obstacle course. Jav finishes first.

* * *

"Pst! Little turd!" Tafa's voice floats to Jav from her bunk beneath his.

"We're supposed to be sleeping," Jav replies.

"Then get down here before I wake up anyone else."

Obediently, Jav climbs down. The bunks aboard the _Mandaean_ are larger than those on the _Lativerna_, with enough room for Jav and Tafa to lay side-by-side.

Tafa's eyes bore into Jav. "Come on the raid with us."

Jav shakes his head.

Tafa takes Jav's hand and, slowly, she guides it down her pajama pants and into her underwear. When he doesn't move his hand, she presses it closer to her. Jav doesn't know what he's feeling; it's lumpy and warm.

"Come on the raid with us," Tafa says again.

Jav pulls his hand out of her pants and shakes his head. "I don't want to go on a raid. What's it for anyway?"

"Turn over," Tafa says.

Jav knows this isn't an answer to his question, but the command in her voice has him turning onto his back anyway. She pushes his sleeping shirt up and reaches into his boxer shorts.

"Hey—"

"Shh..."

And he does go quiet because, right after that, she licks him in a place he's never been licked before. The lick is long and slow and Tafa uses her lips as much as her tongue.

She looks back up after a moment. "Come on the raid with us."

When he doesn't answer, she keeps licking.

Thirty minutes later, Jav climbs back up to his bunk, shoulders heavy with guilt and shame. Why did he let her do that? Why did he let her convince him to go on the raid? Why did she want to to raid Commander Fay's office, anyway?

* * *

The following night, Jav stares at the ceiling of his bunk, waiting for Tafa's signal. He stretches out his hand—there's nearly enough space to fully straighten his arm—and traces the initials scratched into the paint. _J E_ glint metallically back at him.

A sharp whistle pierces the fabric of silence and Jav swings his legs onto the bunk ladder. Like sideways gophers*, the other barracks members' heads poke out from bunks at Tafa's signal. The girl herself stands brazenly in the center of the barracks floor, flaunting bunk curfew. Jav smiles to himself at the thought that he's also breaking curfew.

As he reaches the floor and walks up next to Tafa, she points to two other barracks members who also climb out from their bunks.

"I thought it was just us," Jav whispers.

"Don't be silly." Tafa ties her dark hair loosely back. "Takes at least four to do a proper raid."

"How would you know?"

Tafa scoffs and turns to him for the first time. "You think this is my first one?" She turns to the other recruits, now approaching. "Hass. Toth."

Judson Hass squints at Tafa, though Jav isn't certain if Hass is confused, angry, or can't see. The fourteen-year-old's muscles keep his smaller classmates from asking about the expression. (In case you're curious, he believes it makes him intimidating.) "Fay's office?" Hass asks.

Tafa nods.

"Of course it's Fay's office," Delsie Toth says as she strides for the barracks door. "She's got this skinny shit now." The back of her hand slaps into Jav's stomach as she marches past, the force of her strike nearly forcing him back a step.

"Come on!" Tafa grabs Jav by the hand and races past Toth, out the barracks hatch.

"We're not supposed to be out here!" Jav whispers in protest.

"Where'd you think we were going?" She crouches at an intersection before peering around the corner. Hass and Toth creep silently up beside Jav.

"I didn't think we were just going to run out blindly!" Jav shoots back.

Tafa waves a hand forward and Toth dashes across the corridor intersection, crouching against the wall opposite. After giving the command, Tafa locks her charcoal eyes onto Jav's. "You really think I don't have the patrol schedule memorized? We have two minutes to reach Shit Loop or you won't be the only shit here."

A wave from Toth and Hass darts down the corridor to the next intersection. Soon, Jav sees the leapfrogging** pattern the team has created for sneaking out of the barracks during curfew. Their movements mimic the practiced patter of unthinking smalltalk—they've done this so much they no longer need to think about it.

"Why are we going to Shit Loop?" Jav asks Tafa as they wait for Hass to check the next intersection. "Fay's office isn't around there."

"You'll see," Tafa replies before nodding at Hass's wave and dashing ahead. Jav has little choice but to follow.

The group reaches the obstacle course entry without incident. Toth and Hass begin climbing the first wall, pulling their bodies up with only the aid of a rope. Jav starts to squeeze past the wall when Tafa grabs his arm.

"We're headed for the first corner of the loop," she says before pushing him through the narrow gap.

Jav pauses, watches Hass pull himself over the top of the pallet wall. The larger boy drops, but his bare feet barely make a thump against the grated floor. Jav squeezes past the next obstacle wall and continues to the first corner in the loop. He can just hear the others huffing and grunting as they climb, several walls behind him.

After a few minutes, the trio drops, one by one, into the corner area. Pallet walls, placed at right angles to each other, block off both sides of what would otherwise be a perfectly ordinary ninety degree turn. Instead of the obstacles, however, Tafa points to an air duct in the corridor wall.

"That's where you need to go," she says to Jav.

"That leads to Fay's office?"

Tafa nods. "It's the only way in I've been able to find."

"It's not a way in," Toth spits. "I don't care how skinny he is, that duct's too small."

Hass nods. "His shoulders'll get stuck."

"Not everyone's a rood*** like you," Tafa shoots back. "Toth, get that grate off."

In one smooth motion, Toth snatches Hass's hands from behind his back and hops into a standing position on his shoulders. She pulls a screwdriver from her pocket and Jav winces involuntarily.

"Why sludgies always scared o' tools?" Hass asks.

"What others have you met?"

Tafa sighs. "Takako Seiler and Hye Satterfield."

"Seiler's from _Cerberus_ and Satterfield was in _The Refinery_," Toth says between clenched teeth as she works at a tight screw. Jav didn't know whether or not to be glad that the euphemistic nicknames had been adopted for all child residents of prison ships and not just those aboard _Lativerna_. "Catch!" Toth calls, dropping the metal grate.

Jav jumps back, but Tafa reaches forward with insect speed and snatches the panel from midair. She turns on Jav. "What are you doing? We can't let it hit the ground!"

Jav looks at his feet. "Sorry."

A small thud announces Toth's arrival back on the floor. "Nevermind," Tafa says, turning away from him, "just don't fuck up this part."

Hass turns his back to Jav and holds his hands up in the same pose he used for Toth. "Ready?"

Jav stares at the taller boy. "Uh..."

"Just grab his hands," Tafa says, the words partway between sigh and growl with a tone that leaves no doubt she's losing patience.

Jav does as he's told, grabbing Hass's hands and placing a foot at the top of his calf muscle. "Jump on three," Hass says.

Jav listens to the count and, as told, jumps. At the same time, Hass straightens his leg, acting as a spring propelling Jav upward. His foot plants itself on Hass's shoulder. Wobbling slightly, he straightens into a standing position. The vent opening is at his chest level.

"Can you fit?" Toth asks from the floor.

Jav leans in, tests the fit of his head and shoulders. It's tight, but doable. He pulls back out and nods. "I can do it."

"Okay," Tafa says excitedly, "you're looking for Fay's office. He took a necklace of mine. It's a leather thong with a small vial of green liquid hanging from it. I've already loosened the screws so you should be able to just push the grate off when you get there."

"What's the liquid?" Jav asks.

"Colored water. My sister has a pink one."

Jav nods once. He has no memento of Gran, but if he had and it was taken from him, he'd do anything to get it back. "Lift me in?" he says to Hass who nods in affirmative.

Except for the tight fit, Jav finds it surprisingly easy to make his way through the duct. Hands in front, he pulls himself forward a foot at a time until he reaches the grate to Commander Fay's office. At his touch, it falls with a clatter to the metal floor below.

With no other choice available, he slithers out of the vent face first and drops to the floor, catching himself on his hands. As he stands, Jav looks around for likely places to keep confiscated jewelry. After only a few minutes of searching, he finds the necklace in Fay's top desk drawer.

Jav slips the leather thong over his head and pushes Fay's chair beneath the vent opening. It takes him several tries, but eventually he's able to jump and wriggle his way back into the vent and out the other side, where Hass catches him.

"Did you get it?" Tafa's words tumble out nearly too fast for her to say them.

Jav lifts the glass vial that hangs against his chest and nods.

* * *

Jav moves his eyes over the cafeteria. Recruits from all barracks, including the upperclassmen, take their meals together. Voices mix and echo in the cavernous room. Jav spots an empty table and walks toward it, dancing around the moving bodies and chairs in his way.

"Little shit! Turd Jav!" At his name, Jav whips his head around. He sees Tafa waving him toward her table. "Get your sludge ass over here!"

A smile forces itself, unbidden, to Jav's lips and he walks over to Tafa's table. She kicks a chair out for him.

"Got a surprise for you," she says, the smile on her face equal parts hunger and glee.

Jav drops his tray on the table and sits. "What is it?"

"Any second now," she says. Her eyes dart between the two cafeteria entrances.

"Expecting someone?" Jav teases.

"Toth promised me a show." A scream flings itself into the cafeteria and conversation stops. Tafa's eyes gleam with excitement. She grips Jav's hand. "Here we go!"

Toth runs into the large room and screams again, the noise echoing behind her words as she speaks. "Commander Fay! He's dead! I found him! I thought he was sleeping! He's dead!" She clutches at her hair and wails again as she falls to her knees, her legs having apparently given out.

Jav turns to Tafa as the other barracks commanders rush over to Toth. "Did you do something to him?" he whispers.

"Nothing he didn't deserve," she says. With a wink, she lifts the glass vial, still tied to the leather thong, away from her chest. It is empty; the green liquid gone. "You should thank me."

Disgusted, Jav stands. He leaves his tray, forgotten, on the table as he plods back to the barracks. Barracks 23. No longer run by Commander Fay.

He climbs the ladder to his bunk and slides in, pulling the curtain shut for privacy. Staring up, he sees the initials scratched into the paint above his head. _J E_. Tears leak from the corners of his eyes. He doesn't deserve them. His initials don't deserve to stay.

Pulling his knife, Jav scrapes at the paint, peeling it away from his scratched initials. "Go away. You don't belong here," he growls under his breath. With a final stroke, he removes the last of the paint and lowers his hands.

Scratched into the metal, the initials _J E_ stare back at the boy. More tears fall past his temples to the mattress beneath his head. "I don't deserve you," he whispers to the scratches. He lifts his knife again and places the tip against the metal, ready to remove the letters from the ship itself.

His hand doesn't move. The blade remains pressed to a single spot. A thought strikes Jav. He lowers the knife.

* * *

**Footnotes:**

*An Earth mammal, gophers are now extinct. Jav once saw an ancient digital video file at school demonstrating their iconic behavior.

**Jav has seen frogs as they were able to be successfully transplanted from Earth to New Earth in the tended garden levels of the colony ship.

***An intelligent New Earth sporol, first encountered by Dr. Rosario Roodey, known mostly to humans only by the stereotype of wide, muscular shoulders. They are peaceful but shy, and intelligent enough to keep up a _just in case_ defensive against the humans.


End file.
